


What Dreams May Come

by SammysGirl666



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Unrequited Love, Unrequited Wincest, everything hurts and nothing is beautiful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-04-21
Packaged: 2018-03-25 04:19:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3796474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SammysGirl666/pseuds/SammysGirl666
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's always had this dream that's always the same, but always a little bit different. He can't help but feel it will be the end of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Dreams May Come

**Author's Note:**

> oops.

Dean’s been having these dreams since he hit puberty. In vivid clarity, he sees himself in a mirror, bottle-green eyes weird and distorted in the glass. And then there’s Sam, standing before him, some idealized version of himself, looking almost ethereal, pink lips parted and hazel eyes shining.

He’s naked, miles of smooth skin that abruptly cuts off at his waist, his most intimate parts shrouded in darkness. Dean thanks God for small mercies. The ethereal, dream version of Sam will step forward and reach for Dean. But their skin never meets. Sam opens his mouth to say something, Dean never knows what, but those pink lips part in the start of a sentence. Dean’s heart is pounding, distorted green eyes glaring at himself in the mirrors.

Then he wakes up. He wakes up, panting and sweating…and hard as a rock. He doesn’t know how to stop the dreams or what they mean. All he knows is that they twist his guts with shame and guilt and an ugly sense of resentment.

During the day, Sam is a walking sin. Dean doesn’t know when, doesn’t know how that sinewy body became his greatest weakness but it did. He digs his teeth into his lips more often than not, clamps his eyes shut and berates himself until he’s blue in the face.

He wants it to work, to open his eyes one day and see his brother, just his brother. But there’s a sickness inside him.

Sam just gets more beautiful, and the dreams get more vivid. The parts of Sam that used to always be shrouded in darkness start coming to light. Dream Sam gets bolder and sometimes Dean wakes up with the phantom feeling of his brother’s body in his arms and his lips tingling from something forbidden. Dean becomes a master of oppressing his own feelings, learning breathing techniques and meditation so that he can keep his sick urges under control.

When Sam leaves for college, there’s a part of Dean that untwists and breathes a sigh of relief. They’re the most miserable years of Dean’s life but he’s never felt freer. The dreams stop, and he seeks the flesh of anyone who will offer it up, leaving his marks and taking off, drifting until the imaginary taste of Sam skin is permanently wiped from his mind.

When he gets Sam back, it feels like more of a loss than it should. Sam’s gorgeous, breathtaking back from college.

The dreams return full force but the dream Sam is different, less innocent but needier. Their touches go farther, their skin meeting in ways that Dean’s tried to keep from imagining. In the morning, Dean lays in bed for minutes on end, trying his best to cleanse his mind of the images his dreams produced.

Sam is oblivious through it all, just like he was before Stanford. Sam’s never known and, once again, Dean has to thank some kind of God for small mercies. Sam’s never known and that alone is enough for Dean to keep going, to keep on pretending that his sickness isn’t there.

It’s hard, more often than not, to refrain. Having Sam back in the front seat of his car, wanting nothing more than to reach out and touch what’s never been his, what he’s never had any right to call his own. Sometimes he imagines what it would be like if he were to take that chance but he’s not stupid. As much as his hands itch to reach out and take, he never does.

Years pass.

And then Sam is planning to jump into the hell hole and there won’t be any getting him back. Dean breaks.

Sam’s lips taste like salt and sweat and they don’t move under Dean’s like he once wished they would. But there is no pull-back, no punch, no angry yelling. Sam just looks sad and knowing…like he’s always known, like they’ve both been keeping this secret for Dean.

They don’t say anything, Sam just pats Dean’s cheek. He doesn’t tell him what Dean doesn’t need to hear. Dean will have Lisa now and it won’t be enough but it will be better than pining after something that was only ever his in his dreams.

In the first few months of Sam’s absence, Dean has the dreams constantly, sometimes they’re daydreams, and Lisa has to snap him out of it. After two months, they stop. Dean learns to love the flesh that’s under his mouth even though he’s never really wanted it.

When Sam comes back, all kinds of wrong and fucked up but alive for all intents and purposes, Dean knows he’s screwed. There’s souls and soullessness and there’s all this skin sitting across from Dean in the car and how he just wants to reach out and touch. And the dreams.

But dream Sam is dark now, rough and demanding and taking everything Dean has to give. Dean wakes up feeling like he hasn’t slept at all and Sam doesn’t sleep at all so he watches Dean have these sick dreams and doesn’t say anything. This secret Dean’s been toting around is not his anymore.

More time passes. Sam’s himself again but they’re not the same and Dean is itchy all the time, this constant need thrumming under his skin. He becomes obsessed with hunting and saving people, like the blood on his hands could watch away the sins of his mind.

There’s a purity about purgatory that Dean likes. There is right and wrong, life and death. They’re all monsters and he’s a human. The math is easy, no thinking. Benny fills some hole in Dean and his skin isn’t warm or comforting but it feels good under his lips. He doesn’t dream in purgatory and he convinces himself that he’s okay, that when he gets out, things with Sam will be different.

They are.

But it’s just anger, anger and petty hurt mixed with the same lust that’s always been there. He doesn’t know why he keeps thinking that one day, his need for Sam will just go away. It never goes away, just gets worse with every reunion. Nothing ever feels as good as having his brother back, nothing ever quells that desire, and nothing ever staunches the urges to just take Sam and keep him and never let him go.

The dreams get worse. Dream Sam is repentant, offering his neck to Dean every night. Dean wakes up feeling content and then dread and disgust take over and phantom feeling of Sam around him shakes him to his bones.

More battles, the trials and Sam dying in his arms and then in a hospital bed. And he can’t do this again, can’t lose Sam not matter how crazy having Sam around makes him feel. He’d rather sit forever, pining for a love that he’s never deserved. He goes to lengths he’d never imagined but Sam is alive or, at least, alive as he can be.

More fighting and self-sacrificing and doing something stupid to try and do something good. There’s a mark on his arm now that calls to him more than Sam’s skin ever did. It’s almost a comfort, how much he craves blood and destruction.

And then he’s no longer himself and boundaries don’t exist and Sam’s skin taste like fear and sweat and there’s only enough of him left to not do _that_ to his little brother but that doesn’t stop him from trying to kill him.

But Sam forgives him. Sam’s there all the time now, hands on Dean, trying to be comforting but it just makes his skin stretch tight to keep back all the things inside him. He doesn’t tell Sam to stop, can never ever tell Sam to stop. Sam keeps trying to save him and Dean worries about the lengths he’ll go to and Dean doesn’t know what to do because he’s the problem here. He’s finally the one who needs to be saved.

Dream Sam is gentle, his hands ghosting over Dean’s skin. Dean wakes up feeling lost, like the tables have turned and Sam doesn’t see it or doesn’t say anything about it because his hands are still on Dean all the time and it’s a miracle that he hasn’t burst open wide.

“Dean,” Sam says one night when they’re in his room and Sam is leaving after they’ve watched an episode of Game of Thrones, “you know…you don’t have to, er, refrain. I mean I…I wouldn’t hate you, you know for—“

“Get out Sam,” Dean snaps. Sam doesn’t hesitate, gets up and leaves the room before saying goodnight. Dean’s stomach turns because this is worse. It’s one thing to want Sam but for Sam to offer himself up just placate whatever disease runs rampant through Dean’s veins…it turns Dean’s stomach so hard, he almost loses his dinner.

Dream Sam is complacent and quiet and Dean wakes up halfway through, retching over the side of the bed. The mark on his arm his burning and he runs his fingers over it, tracing the design and he presses his head back into the pillow. The raised skin feels warm and the voices in his head whisper evil, terrible things.

He looks at it, his eyes able to see it even though the room is pitch dark. The mark sings and down the hall, Sam slumbers, an offer of his own skin on the table between him and Dean. The gut wrenching sob pulled from Dean’s lips isn’t something he can be held accountable for. He squeezes his eyes shut, sees Sam complacent body beneath him and groans, his fingers digging into the mark on his arm.

In quiet hours of the late night, Dean can’t help but hope the thing the kills him.


End file.
